The Bachelorette In keeping with the horse/unicorn theme of the season, moments later, he calls her “naggy.” (ABC/Rick Rowell) I have a question: What happened to the Bachelor pied–à–terre? You remember, that little guest house that was down the hill from the McMansion that contestants would sometimes sneak into, either to slip into the Bachelor’s bed in their bikinis and stripper shoes or to run around in their black boxes, banging their head into things while wearing the Bachelor’s motorcycle helmet? One of the big selling points of the early parts of Farmer Teeth’s season was that the pied–à–terre was just down the driveway, so if any of the ladies were so inclined ~wink wink~ they could pay him a visit at any time. We haven’t seen the pied–à–terre since. In fact, Ben the Bachelor and Jojo the Unicorn have both been hidden away in some hotel in Thousand Oaks somewhere, leading me to want to know what, exactly, Chris Soules and his harem did to that guest house? Did the Producers look at the decontamination costs and dent marks from the motorcycle helmet and just decide it would be cheaper to burn the whole thing down? I NEED ANSWERS. Anyway, Jojo the Unicorn’s busy at this motel, musing at her good luck at being the Bachelorette, fixating not for the last time in this episode on how she wants the kind of love Ben the Bachelor and Friendly Skies found. (Methinks someone isn’t quite over it yet. Ahem.) Over at the McMANsion, Chris Harrison explains to the man-apes that this week will feature two group dates and one 1-on-1 date before delivering the first group date card: “Lucifer, Toasted, Ali, Rocky, The Joker, All-4-Wells, Fun Robby, Fireman Grant, Boner, and Cowboy Luke: Let’s heat things up. HEART! Jojo the Unicorn.” While the man-apes contemplate the meaning of this invitation, a limo pulls up into the Continue Reading

A WRITER claims being poisoned with the venom from a South American FROG cured his erectile dysfunction. The treatment - known as kambo - is the latest in a wave of new-age tribal medicines to emerge from deep within the Amazon jungle. It involves burning the skin, then smearing a paste made from the frog poison into the wound so it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. Participants are then subjected to waves of violent nausea that leaves them "projectile vomiting" stomach bile. Jens Cromer, a 33-year-old writer from Los Angeles, told The Sun Online the process instantly cured him of impotence. He said: "I had just found my way into a creative and sexual blockage. It was not my first dance with medicine from the Amazon, I had done a ayahuasca retreat in Peru so I was open to non-traditional, or non-Western, medicine." There ceremony, held in an apartment in LA, began with a South American version of snuff tobacco being blown up Jens' nose. Then a burnt vine was used to sear wounds on the skin of his shoulder, before the venom - a "milky, white paste" - was applied. Jens said: "I started chugging water. He put the dots on my shoulder and when you start feeling like it, it's like a tingling sensation. "That started moving down my body, like a slow cascade. "You don't have any control over it, obviously it concentrates in your stomach. "Within five minutes it was screaming loud and I just start projectile vomiting all that water. "I must have chugged at least two litres (3.5 pints) worth. I almost filled up the bucket." The person conducting the "ceremony" then flipped the small dots of smeared venom over "like a pancake" and the process was repeated. Jens said: "Afterwards I felt just unbelievable calm and peace and quiet. It completely stopped that voice in the back of your head that's constantly going. "And that day when I went home and was kissing my girlfriend it was working already. It was definitely working better and better after the ceremony." Kambo Continue Reading

Every drug that comes to market has a stringent series of clinical trials behind it. And Quality Clinical Research Inc. of Omaha is among the players. In the past decade, “we’ve helped secure FDA approval for 45 or more drugs,” said QCR vice president Seneca Harrison. Among them: Celebrex (an anti-inflammatory drug) and Viagra (for treatment of erectile dysfunction). “When you participate in a QCR trial, you’re a patient under the care and guidance of an expertly trained medical staff,” said Harrison. “You’re not a guinea pig, which sometimes is the misconception.” Some health care professionals running clinical trials for QCR work out of QCR’s Regency offices, while others are affiliated with a major health system or other metro satellite location with specialized doctors, labs or testing equipment, according to Harrison. How QCR lands trials “Pharmaceutical companies approach us to see if we can handle a particular study,” said Harrison, who launched QCR in 2003 with wife, Tricia, as CEO and clinic coordinator. The answer depends on the criteria for the study and the number of qualifying candidates in the clinic’s database. “We have very stringent criteria for studies,” Harrison said. "We follow a clinical trial’s criteria to the letter. It’s safe.” Quality Clinical Research currently is conducting trials for 33 pharmaceutical and health care companies. Allergan, Novartis and Pfizer are among the more widely known. Study participants might range from a newborn who can’t drink breast milk to a teen athlete who suffers from exercise-induced asthma to an 85-year-old at high risk for influenza. “Pretty much any walk of life.” The value of clinical studies became personal for Harrison and his family in 2008. His sister died that year from sickle cell anemia, an inherited blood disease traced to abnormal hemoglobin. She was 28 and left behind Continue Reading

Dear Running Doc: I am a healthy 33 year old runner. I am married and have been running 3 marathons with my wife a year. I am lucky I have never had any injury that has stopped my training. This is weird Doc and I hope you can help me. I just started biking and swimming and plan to do my first triathlon this year. Up until now I have had a great sex life but all of a sudden as I started triathlon training I developed erectile dysfunction. I went to my internist who did a complete physical and drew tons of blood tests. All was normal including testosterone levels. My Doc can’t understand why but said I should just stop triathlon training since that is the only thing that is new! Can this be? Have you heard of this? Or is he missing something? - David B. Manhasset, NY Thank you for the question David. This is actually a common problem that I see in my patients who are new triathletes and is not “weird”; I trust other Sports Docs as well see this if they ask. In my experience, new triathletes develop this condition because they don’t take seriously the importance of proper fit of a bicycle and seat. This is especially true when they borrow a tri-bike from a friend and don’t bother to reset the bike fit to suit their particular position. The aero-dynamically favorable time trial bike position, employed by any bike with extended tri bars and a forward seat position, puts much more pressure on the rider’s pudendal nerve than the standard road-racing position. My anatomy professor in med school called the pudendal nerve “the most glorious nerve in the male body”. Glorious it is if it isn’t pinched or bruised. The nerve is very superficial, lying just under a man’s testicles, and an improper seat can hurt the nerve and hurt performance. FOLLOW THE DAILY NEWS SPORTS ON FACEBOOK. "LIKE" US HERE. The good news is that if you get your bike fitted at the local bike shop, and perhaps change the seat Continue Reading

Men who exercise more have better erectile and sexual function, suggests a small study of older overweight men. The authors say their results support the idea that exercise might one day be prescribed as a treatment for erectile dysfunction. While previous research has linked erections to physical activity, the current study is the first to include a high proportion of African-Americans and finds they get the same apparent benefit from exercise as white men. "Our results confirm previous work, however, no study has ever addressed how a minimal amount of exercise impacts both erectile and sexual function among black men, a population with increased prevalence of erectile dysfunction risk factors including obesity, diabetes, sedentary lifestyle and lower socioeconomic status," senior study author Adriana Vidal, a researcher at the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, said in an email. Vidal and colleagues examined exercise habits and sexual function in 295 healthy men who were part of a research project evaluating prostate cancer risk at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in North Carolina. On average, the men were about 62 years old, and they were all overweight or obese. Roughly one third had diabetes or a history of chest pain or heart attacks. About three quarters were current or former smokers. Ninety-three men, or about a third of the group, were African-American. Researchers asked the participants how often they exercised, and how intensely, as well as what types of physical activities they did. Men were scored based on a measure known as metabolic equivalent of task (MET) hours per week and placed in four categories ranging from sedentary, with three or fewer MET hours/week, to highly active, with at least 18 MET hours/week. Most often, the men were sedentary, with 44% reporting little activity. But a substantial proportion, 26%, were highly active. Researchers also questioned the men Continue Reading